The Orwellian arithmetic of mass surveillance

The justifications for indiscriminant mass surveillance are becoming increasingly absurd. False calls to patriotism and unwavering professionalism are entirely at odds with known reality - let's recall some facts.

The peculiar calculus of US Intelligence was laid bare to
the world when NSA Director General Keith Alexander and Director of National
Intelligence James Clapper recently appeared before the Senate Select Committee
on Intelligence. At one point General Alexander, resentful at this unnecessary
intrusion into his agency’s activities fell back on what Samuel Johnson called
‘the last refuge of the scoundrel’. Patriotism. Talking ‘from the heart’, he
appealed to the emotions of the committee:

‘These are patriots
who come to work every day saying “How can we defend this country and protect
our civil liberties and privacy?” Nothing that has been released, has shown
that we are trying to do something illegal or un-professional.’

The sums are starting to emerge in this appeal, but no one
denies the NSA’s innate professionalism. They are at the cutting edge of data
collection and surveillance monitoring, due in part to the only part of the
‘special relationship’ that truly exists: the secure link between the UK’s GCHQ and
the NSA exposed by Snowden but an open secret to anyone who studies the math.
The arithmetic according to Alexander goes like this:

The NSA is stuffed full of patriots = No wrong can be done
by the NSA.

Never mind the damage done by the botched intelligence
operations of yore. That wasn’t the NSA. Forget the CIA’s state-sponsored
assassinations, the failed coups or more spectacularly the successful ones that
toppled democratically elected leaders and consistently undermined the
credibility of a nation that pretends to defend democracy. Never mind the
Iran-Contra affair, the Sandanistas and well, since we’re only talking about
ancient history here, the failure to acknowledge the coup in Egypt for what it
was, the illegal rendition parties across the globe, the odd illegal war and
the continuing machinations that say anything goes as long as it suits the
current agenda of priorities - something drawn up every couple of years like an
a la carte menu that the restaurant keeps to itself and seldom shares with
those who pay the bill.

But all of that was in the bad old days, even if it was only
last week that Angela Merkel noticed a few more clicks on her phone and
couldn’t get reception anywhere near her right ear. The NSA could not possibly
be involved in anything that violated the constitution or acted against the
liberties of its citizens because they are patriots.
But their allies could. Those effete Europeans with their weird cheeses,
suggestive pasta shapes and warm beer could do it and if the NSA just happened
to run across the fact that they were
doing it, and maybe even asked them to, they could legitimately see the data
and utilise it. The ultimate intelligence cut-out: a whole continent.

Of course there is
a perpetual undercurrent of ‘so what?’ about the revelation that allies spy on
allies as well as enemies. They have been doing so for as long as there have
been intelligence agencies and probably before. The Germans are being a little
prim saying ‘you do not spy on your friends’, but notice that the French are
suddenly very silent on the matter and are not chiming in with their pious
sentiment. Also, like every other country, they seem to have no qualms about
spying on their own. The Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND) - Germany’s foreign intelligence
service - made a fool of itself in 2005 when it placed many of the country’s
journalists under surveillance trying to find the source of leaks from…the BND.
Intelligence is an Ouroboros serpent that feeds itself with itself.

Once you know that
if you use the right political math you can gather anything on anybody, well,
get out your calculator; there’s data to eat and we’re hungry. It’s an
addiction described by Graham Greene, Kim Philby and John Le Carre through
memoir and fiction. The covert world can be as exciting as catnip to a field
agent or intelligence analyst, never more so than when an order comes in to
monitor a world leader or one of your own country’s politicians. On one side of
the ‘special relationship’ a frisson ripples round the UK Security Service or the Secret Intelligence Service as the legal
officer gives the OK and the surveillance can begin. On the other, a little
shiver shakes the foundations of the NSA presaged by an email or briefing note
that begins ‘Under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, and Section 215 of
the USA-PATRIOT Act of 2001…’ Because
then, anything goes.

The former enables collection and reading of the content
of communications generated by non-U.S. persons, the second enables the
collection of metadata, but not the specific content, of U.S. citizens’ electronic or
digital communications - that they sub-contract to those sneaky Europeans.

‘No State shall make
or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens
of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty,
or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its
jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws…unless they don’t notice.’

This is the
equivalent of a child covering their eyes during a game of hide and seek on the
basis that if they can’t see Papa, Papa won’t be able to see them. As with so
many things emerging from these exchanges on both sides of the Atlantic, it is not the product of a credible intellect.

The typical defence
to all this activity is that of General Alexander to the Black
Hat security conference in July of this year. Terrorists live amongst us.
This is undeniable. London and New York have had painful confirmation of
that. But balance and oversight are the keys and it simply isn’t good enough to
allow the likes of GCHQ and the NSA to pursue agendas that are subject to
interpretations that go beyond protecting the country and move into mass
surveillance for its own sake. There has to be a debate that does not end with
governments of every hue deciding to leave the matter in the hands of the
spies. The Spycatcher
affair of the eighties showed what such abandonment of responsibility led to,
with a cabal within MI5 pursuing an overtly political agenda against its own
government. There is nothing in the subsequent expansion of digital capability
that suggests there is sufficient oversight to prevent this happening again.
Worse, a government can pass to the intelligence community agendas it would
rather not expose to voters. It can therefore have a vested interest in
maintaining the appearance of monitoring via committee and legal officers on
every office floor whilst paying only lip service to the realities of what
actually goes on.

The ultimate
calculus of the international intelligence community comes up with the
conclusion: ‘Ifwe don’t watch everybody, we might miss something that may threaten our
country, our political or our commercial interests or our agency’s existence.’
Two and two do not make five. It is Orwellian arithmetic and it doesn’t add up.

If you liked this piece, you can sign up for OurKingdom's weekly updatehere, join our Facebookhereor follow us on Twitterhere.

About the author

Dom
Shaw is a writer and filmmaker. He won the 1982 Grierson Award for Best
Documentary for co-directing the seminal post-punk documentary “Rough Cut &
Ready Dubbed” and has written for the BBC and ITV. His first novel, “Eric is
Awake” is on sale now. Follow him on @papadom2

This article is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 licence.
If you have any queries about republishing please contact us.
Please check individual images for licensing details.